Walking Together on the Way: Anglican and Catholic Official Commentaries on the ARCIC agreed statement

By Ormond Rush and James Hawkey

The first agreed of the third phase of the ARCIC since 2005, the Commission asks what Anglicans and Catholics cstatement an learn from one another to cooperate toward communion.

• Language: English
• Publisher: SPCK
• Release date: Dec 6, 2018
• ISBN: 9780281078950

Book preview

Entitled Walking Together on the Way: Learning to Be the Church—Local, Regional, Universal (henceforth, WTW), this is the first Agreed Statement of the third phase of the Anglican–Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC III). The commentary that follows will situate WTW within the history of ARCIC, highlight its underlying ecclesiology and ecumenical methodology, summarize its salient points, and evaluate, from a Catholic perspective, its possible contribution to contemporary Roman Catholic self-understanding and practice. The commentary will refer to WTW as ‘the document’ or ‘the Agreed Statement’. Its chapters will be referred to as ‘sections’, with their numbered elements as ‘paragraphs’ (§).

The Background

Since ARCIC was established in 1966 and began its work in 1970, there have been three major phases of dialogue. WTW is the result of the third major phase, which began in 2011. While the document builds upon the results of previous Agreed Statements from ARCIC I and ARCIC II, two Agreed Statements in particular have proved to be important, one from 1991 and the other from 1999. Firstly, the 1991 ARCIC II Agreed Statement Church as Communion provides the fundamental communion ecclesiology which WTW explicitly presupposes. In 1999, the third of ARCIC II’s statements on authority, The Gift of Authority, brought further clarity to the issues around the notion of authority which emerge from a communion ecclesiology. This Agreed Statement ended with a list of questions that had been raised for Roman Catholics during the dialogue:

[I]s there at all levels effective participation of clergy as well as lay people in emerging synodal bodies? Has the teaching of the Second Vatican Council regarding the collegiality of bishops been implemented sufficiently? Do the actions of bishops reflect sufficient awareness of the extent of the authority they receive through ordination for governing the local church? Has enough provision been made to ensure consultation between the Bishop of Rome and the local churches prior to the making of important decisions affecting either a local church or the whole Church? How is the variety of theological opinion taken into account when such decisions are made? In supporting the Bishop of Rome in his work of promoting communion among the churches, do the structures and procedures of the Roman Curia adequately respect the exercise of episcope at other levels? Above all, how will the Roman Catholic Church address the question of universal primacy as it emerges from ‘the patient and fraternal dialogue’ about the exercise of the office of the Bishop of Rome to which John Paul II has invited ‘church leaders and their theologians’? (The Gift of Authority, §57)

These would turn out to be questions which ARCIC III set out to address, and the current document WTW is the result.

When ARCIC III was constituted in 2011, it was given the mandate to explore the double theme: ‘The Church as Communion, local and universal, and how in communion the local and universal Church come to discern right ethical teaching.’ When work began, the Commission deliberately chose to limit its focus initially to only the first of these, the Church as communion, local and universal, leaving the second matter of ethical teaching to a later document. However, as explained in paragraph 11, the Commission decided to broaden its focus beyond just the local and worldwide/universal levels of church life, and address the intermediate regional level.

The reason given by the Commission for this addition to its mandate is the simple de facto existence of regional structures in both communions. On the Catholic side, this is evident in the administrative organization of dioceses into regions, often national, with accompanying episcopal conferences; or at a smaller level, canon law’s provision for metropolitans and provinces. Moreover, WTW recalls the regular practice of regional synods in the early Church and their ‘utility’ (§11); these regional bodies were found to be beneficial both at the local and at the universal levels, because of the opportunity they afforded for dialogue on common problems in church life, worship, and teaching. Citing the universal-level Council of Nicaea of 325 as a paradigmatic example of such benefits also on the regional level, the document asserts: ‘At all times in the Church, from its earliest days to the present, controversy, debate, dialogue, and synodal processes have led—eventually and often not quickly—to clarification, and ultimately a more precise articulation of the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints (Jude 1.3) … The development of doctrine shows that contested questions, often debated vigorously throughout the Church, locally, regionally, and globally, can lead eventually to a deeper common understanding and more precise articulation of the truth’ (§12). These sentences could well summarize one major contribution that WTW might well make for the Catholic Church’s renewed appreciation and promotion of regional levels of teaching and governance.

This present commentary is intended as a Catholic commentary on WTW, looking at only what the Roman Catholic Church has to learn; the Anglican Communion provides its own commentary, which considers the various suggested points of Anglican receptive learning from Catholics. How, then, can WTW be assessed from the point of view of the Roman Catholic Church? What criterion should be used? The fundamental criterion chosen here is the pre-eminent authority for Catholics in the recent magisterial teaching of the Roman Catholic Church, the Second Vatican Council (1962–65). This ecclesial event, along with its sixteen documents, has known over fifty years of reception into the fabric of the Church’s life and self-understanding. Pope Francis is currently promoting an even deeper reception of the Council through his programme of renewal and reform. The question may well be raised: can WTW help Roman Catholics incorporate into their ecclesial life aspects of the Council’s vision which have yet to be fully received?

The Ecclesiology

As ARCIC II’s Agreed Statement Church as Communion shows, communion ecclesiology has been of great benefit in ecumenical dialogues, and ARCIC’s own Agreed Statements in particular. WTW presupposes and builds on this ecclesiology. Paragraph 3 specifically names the document’s ecclesiological emphasis: the interrelated notions of ‘the Church as the pilgrim People of God’ and ‘the Church as communion (koinonia)’. These two ways of speaking of the Church fashion the document’s vision. The biblical phrase ‘People of God’ appears seven times throughout. But it is the biblical and patristic notion of ‘communion’ that overwhelmingly predominates as WTW’s integrating principle. It is used 16 times in the introductory glossary for explaining other terms throughout the text; 18 times in the two-page preface; and 249 times in the main text (even apart from the 61 instances of the term ‘Anglican Communion’).

This ecclesiological framework certainly coheres with the self-understanding of the Roman Catholic Church as presented in the documents of the Second Vatican Council. More than any other characterization of the Church, the Second Vatican Council’s documents most often refer to the Church as ‘the People of God’. As used by the Council, the term refers to the whole body of the faithful: laity, religious, priests, bishops, Pope—together in relationship with the Triune God, who calls the whole Church on mission. The Council envisages the People of God bound together in unity by the Holy Spirit as a communion of all the faithful (communio fidelium), albeit living in local churches throughout the world, which together constitute a communion of churches (communio ecclesiarum); these churches are shepherded by bishops in communion with one another, with and under the Bishop of Rome (communio hierarchica). The 1985 Extraordinary Synod of Bishops, convened by Pope John Paul II twenty years after the Second Vatican Council, stated: ‘The ecclesiology of communion is the central idea and the fundamental idea in the documents of the Council’ (Final Report, II C).

In exploring the implications of communion ecclesiology, WTW uses some specific terminology. When speaking of the various dimensions of ecclesial communion (local, trans-local, regional, national, worldwide/universal), WTW uses the language of ‘levels’. This usage, it states, is ‘common ecumenical practice’ (§10, note 4). The term ‘trans-local’ is used to refer to ‘any expression of church life beyond the level of the diocese: that is to say, at the metropolitan, regional, national, and worldwide levels’ (although there seems to be some inconsistency, with the terms ‘trans-local’ and ‘regional’ sometimes being used interchangeably). Because of the different nuances in Anglican and Catholic understanding, the descriptor ‘worldwide’ is used when referring to the former, and the descriptor ‘universal’ when referring to the latter.

Also, the document appropriates the Anglican term ‘instruments of communion’ to describe, for both traditions, ‘structures, procedures,